Masi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. As I said in my statement yesterday on the Auditor General's report on Child and Family Services, the lack of staff and resources is a theme that runs through that report. This lack of resources is jeopardizing the safety of children and care. The Minister has committed to hiring more staff. Will he work with the Finance Minister to bring forward a supplementary appropriation before the end of this sitting? Mahsi.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have gone through the business planning process. We are proposing the increase of positions in this area. In the meantime, I have directed the department to begin staffing in anticipation of the passage of those positions so that we can hit the ground running today to start filling those positions. We have tools and mechanisms available to us, double filling positions, anticipatory hiring, eligibility list. We are doing that work now. I will have a discussion with the Minister, I'm happy to do that, about whether or not we can expedite that given the crisis that is in front of us.
As a note, in response to our internal audit that was completed in May, we have actually moved forward with re-profiling some positions and the establishment of positions within the authority. For instance, we have established seven foster-parent coordinator positions, and we have filled four of them already. We have already started taking action, based on our audit, and our audit was reconfirmed by the Auditor General. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you to the Minister for that response. Mr. Speaker, it's hard to recruit and retain social workers because the work is so grueling. I'm not surprised that there are many vacant positions. What I would like to know from the Minister is what he is doing to strengthen the recruitment and retention of social workers.
Mr. Speaker, I have actually been having conversations with some of our front-line staff to try to get a determination as to some of the frustrations they feel. Part of the frustration they feel is that, with the implementation of Building Stronger Families, they were asked to do an awful lot, both provide their duties and services they did prior to implementation but also learn and test an entire new system. It has made them a little thin. They have said they want more training. They have said they want better contact and involvement in making decisions. They want to be able to know that their voices are heard.
We have actually actioned every one of the issues that they have raised, following up on our May 2017 audit, and we have already started to see some improvements. I had a conversation with a couple of them last week who said they haven't felt this supported since pre-implementation of Building Stronger Families. They are excited by the direction we are going and excited by the direction we are taking.
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General found, as the Minister has said, that staff is overburdened with administrative work. The Minister's decision to engage in a system-wide accreditation exercise next year is going to increase that burden substantially at a time when the focus needs to be on building relationships with children and families. Will the Minister consider deferring this audit for at least a year?
This audit isn’t an audit of Social Services or Child and Family Services. This is an audit of the entire Health and Social Services system. It is an accreditation, rather, of the entire Health and Social Services system. It needs to be done. We will certainly work closely with the CFS division to make sure that the burden placed on them is as low as possible. We will bring in extra staff if we need to, to help them through this time.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there was a time when Social Services was a stand-alone department within the GNWT. It is my impression that since the current department was created many years ago, that Child and Family Services has played second fiddle to the health side of the department. I would say that this approach to the accreditation reveals that, as well. Is it time to divide the department so that each segment gets the attention it deserves? Thank you.
That question has been asked and debated many times in this House. What we have learned over the years is that in order to provide holistic care, we need to make sure that our social services side is working closely and cooperatively with the health and social services side. Moving to a single authority and moving forward with our Cultural Competency Action Plan has given us the opportunity to move in a more client-focused delivery model here in the Northwest Territories, which brings social services staff as well as health practitioners together to do holistic healing.
If we start breaking them up, we will start creating silos, more so than exist today. In the last number of months since May, we have been working incredibly hard to break down the silos that exist within our authority in this particular area. We are already seeing some progress in that area, in the collaboration of working together of both sides of the system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. The Minister has been in his office for five years and, before that, was a member of the Standing Committee of Social Programs that undertook a comprehensive review of Child and Family Services. Given the Minister’s clear experience and interest in this file, why has he not made correcting the deficiencies in Child and Family Services his top priority as Minister? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Health and Social Services portfolio is a significantly large portfolio, and there are many different competing priorities and demands. The Member is assuming that I haven’t made child and family services a priority. This is an area that has been important to me since before I was an MLA.
When I became the Minister of Health and Social Services, I was deeply disturbed to find out that no progress, zero, had been made on the implementation of the recommendations put forward by the standing committee. I made it a priority to move on all of those recommendations and directed the department at the time to start implementing those recommendations through Building Stronger Families. Building Stronger Families also incorporated the 11 recommendations from the Auditor General at the time, remembering that some of those recommendations actually talk about fixing the foundation and putting in the tools that are necessary to support our employees at the front line.
I heard clearly from residents and heard clearly from staff during those initial reviews that things like our Child and Family Information System was garbage and did not allow them to do their reporting in a way that needed to be done. I have brought forward budget asks on this file to both implement the structured decision-making tools and customize them to the Northwest Territories as well as a budget to bring in Matrix, which is our new information system in Child and Family Services.
That information system came in last year. Already, it has given us the ability to report on things that we have never had the capacity to do so that we can do real-time quality assessments. We are doing those today and providing those results to our front-line staff so they know where there are challenges and they are able to address those challenges immediately as opposed to waiting another year until another audit comes out. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Auditor General, as my honourable friend from Yellowknife Centre has mentioned, found that these new administrative structures that the Minister has spoken about have not improved service delivery. In fact, these complex changes have turned it into an overburdened system, continues to leave children vulnerable. It sounds like the Minister was personally involved with approving these changes. What has his follow-up been on seeing if they are actually working given what is said in the Auditor General’s report and in the department’s own internal audit report?
In addition to the work we did rolling out Building Stronger Families, we did make significant legislative changes to allow this new delivery of child and family services to become a reality. Building Stronger Families moves us from an apprehension-based system, which has traditionally been the system provided in the Northwest Territories and across Canada, to a system that the people of the Northwest Territories told us they wanted. They wanted a prevention-based system that focused on families while at the same time protecting children.
We made a number of legislative challenges. One of them that we made that, you know, is questionable at this point, even though it was still the right thing to do, is we actually increased our requirement to report. We were having difficulty reporting. We increased our requirement to report because it is the right thing to do. Then, we put in the tools so that they can actually do that reporting. Matrix didn’t come in until last year. The audits that we have done have all been for years prior to that.
We are making a fundamental shift, and we have. This work that we are doing could not be possible without laying the foundation stones, which includes the SDM, Matrix, and the legislation we put forward. When we released Building Stronger Families, I said clearly it is going to take us a couple years to build the foundation. We hadn’t anticipated, at that time, that we would have this kind of response and this difficulty at the front end delivering, but we accept that that was our responsibility.
We did not reach out to our front-line staff and manage the change as effectively as we should have. We have heard from our staff. They have told us that we need to do better. We are doing better by engaging with them and working with them, still a long way to go. A lot of changes are still needed. We are committed to making those changes.
The Minister talked about taking immediate action when he took over this portfolio. He has talked about the May audit. Clearly, these concerns from front-line staff and the totality of concerns are significant and have been present for a long time. When was the Minister first made aware that Child and Family Services was worse off now than it was in 2014?
I think the Member and all Members remember, when we brought forward the audit of the 2015-2016 files, the audit, too, was broke. We ended up having a real problem making some determinations. From that audit, we knew there was something that wasn’t exactly right, but we didn’t understand the magnitude. I directed the department to fix the problem so that we could do a comprehensive audit so we could understand where we were. That audit was completed in May 2017, at which point the department expressed to me and demonstrated the challenges we were facing.
At that time, I immediately directed that we move forward with increasing the number of positions in the upcoming budget, but we started making changes within to add other positions, like the foster management positions. I also directed them to move from a one-year audit process to a more quality-assurance-based system based on the fact that the new tool Matrix allows us to report monthly. We started making these changes immediately, as soon as we became aware. I have been monitoring the progress.
The Auditor General report was happening at the same time. We chose not to wait for the Auditor General’s report to start actioning these items because, at the end of the day, these children only have one opportunity at a childhood. We wanted to make sure that we are addressing these challenges and these concerns immediately once they became obvious.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, I am torn with these responses. I appreciate the Minister is working on this. Ultimately, he has had plenty of time to start making progress on this. Things are worse today than they were before. Someone needs to take responsibility for this, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister take personal responsibility and resign? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
A number of years ago, when we moved Building Stronger Families, I said in the media that we needed to make sure that we hold our staff accountable for this action. This is a plan that needs to be done by the staff of the Northwest Territories. It is sad to say that, when I met with staff in May and again last week to review progress that we have made to date, not one person in that department who was there last week was there when we rolled out Building Stronger Families. We have gone through a complete management change, some because they needed to retire, some because they needed to go. We are making the changes that are necessary. I believe we are on the right path.
I Would Encourage The Member, And I Am Sure He Will: on December 12th, the department will be coming to both committees with the auditor, and they will be walking through our action plan. That just doesn’t demonstrate work we want to do, but it also clearly articulates work that we have done to make these improvements. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le president. [Translation] My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. An October 5th news release from the department says that there has been a significant improvement in French language communications and services, according to an independent audit. However, there are a number of deficiencies identified in the audit. First, what formal mechanism will be used to address and improve upon the services identified as being deficient? [Translation ends]. Merci, Monsieur le President.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just start by clarifying that I am struggling with French, but I am going to try to do the best to answer appropriately as per the interpreter. Thank you for the translation on the mic.
My understanding is that we want to know what formal mechanisms can be used to address and improve on the services identified within the audit. The audit looked at four different areas. It looked at service delivery, how we deliver our programs; active offers, do we even offer people to be able to have service in French; our signage; and our display of public information or our publications. I was quite impressed, actually, when we got the results from the audit that we have made some improvements. That is a good sign, but we still have work to go. Just because we have done improvements doesn't mean we stop now.
We need to work closely with the francophone community, and we are committed to doing that. We are going to be looking at a monitoring and evaluation and accountability plan that will track the changes that are needed and the ones that are recommended in the audit, and we will keep on top of them to make sure that we have not only adequate but the best services that we can provide in French as possible to the residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
[Translation]. One of the issues noted is that French language training is shorter in duration than training offered by other orders of government. I have been told, for example, that there is one group of employees taking 30 hours of coursework over 10 weeks, while in the federal government groups take up to 120 hours for the same period. The audit recommends that our training hours be aligned with those used by other governments. Can the Minister explain how she intends to respond to this audit recommendation? [Translation ends].
I have been assured by my department that, actually, our training is meeting the needs of employees, but I also take heed, and I think that we need to challenge that because the audit is saying that we need to do better with our training.
I am committed to actually looking at the employees that are taking that training and actually doing a survey of them and asking them personally, "Is that training enough? What would you like to see implemented?"
I will take that on, and depending on what the employees say, we will adjust our training. Like I said earlier, we want to provide the best service possible in all of our languages in the Northwest Territories, and my commitment is to make sure that we do that and that we are working towards the needs of the employees.
Merci, Monsieur le President. [Translation] Another area addressed in the report is emergency alert messaging to the general public which is not available in French. Obviously this is a very important matter. Can the Minister explain how our official languages are going to be incorporated into emergency services, including in alert messages and 911 services moving ahead? [Translation ends]. Merci, Monsieur le President.
Like I said, when I first got the audit, I was actually really impressed with the progress that we have made, but when I read the audit and it said that we need to do better with our alert messaging, that was a concern. Health and safety has to be our priority.
We are working closely with MACA. My understanding was that they did, actually, when they did the testing of the alert messaging, the radio station did have the French translation, and it was missed. It didn't happen. That is not okay. That is not an excuse. What I am saying is that we need to work closer with MACA. We need to make sure that our alert system, when it broadcasts that there is an alert out there, that people understand and can evacuate or do whatever they need to make sure that they are safe.
That is an area that we need to make sure that we bump up, and again, my commitment is that is a priority for me because that is about emergency services. That is not just asking, "Do you want a French translator?" That is life or death.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. [Translation] Finally, there seems to be an imbalance in the amount of money being spent on translation - very large - and the amount of money spent on training, which is much less. It seems obvious that if we improve training, we won’t need to spend as much on translation, and we can enjoy the benefits of all of our official languages at the same time. How will the Minister put greater emphasis on training, in keeping with the recommendations from this audit? [Translation ends]. Merci, Monsieur le President.
I want to start by saying that translation services is not as easy as just speaking a second language. It is actually a profession. It is actually formal training to be able to do that. It is an expensive profession, as well, but a very necessary one within the territories.
The training that we are looking for more with our employees to whom we are offering the French languages is more on the active offer. It is being able to notice when somebody needs translation services, be able to say that, hopefully, in their language, and be able to transfer them over. It is more condensed training that we are looking at.
I agree with the Member. If we can get more people trained in speaking French fluently, then we won't need as many translators. However, I do have to say that not all of us have that capability. I went through high school here. We didn't have an option of Indigenous languages back then. We learned French, and Mr. Speaker, I struggle with saying "hello," "goodbye," and "how are you doing?" today.
Not everyone can get there, I recognize. I am going to try again. Until then, we will need professional translators to be able to provide the service, and we need our employees to at least be able to say, "Bonjour," and I can't say the rest, but "do you need a translator?" That is what we are focusing on, but like I had noted before, our training, if it is not meeting the needs of the employees, then we need to find out what their needs are and work on strengthening it. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
Bonjour, Mr. Speaker.
---Laughter
Mr. Speaker, following up to my statements on the innovation of new technology coming north, it is a far advancement to the cabin dad had.
My first question here is: if the SIP panels are such an innovative proven technology with reductions to the utility costs of the homes, what is the NWT Housing Corporation doing with this proven technology for continuance to the SIP model homes? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the Member is quite right. The NWT Housing Corporation has utilized the structural insulation panels in the past and, most recently, for communities in the Sahtu region. We are going to continue to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the SIP panels in these units, but I anticipate that there will be gains in energy efficiency and see how we can utilize the structural insulation panels in other communities in the Northwest Territories, especially ones where we do see high costs of the utility costs.
Yesterday, I had questions from another Member, and we talked about the user-pay power system. I mentioned that with that user-pay power system, we have also seen an 8 percent decrease in fuel consumption, which that funding actually goes back into programs we run through NWT Housing Corporation. We are going to continue to monitor and evaluate these solar panels. I am sure we are going to see some really good results, then hopefully continue to use them in other communities as one of our goals is to create energy-efficient homes, adequate, safe, and affordable homes, as well.
Thanks to the Minister for the reply here. I think we're going in the right direction. We know there's a demand for this technology in the smaller communities where you have already high utility costs for the livelihood of the homeowner. Given the demand that's out there, is the Housing Corporation working with the manufacturing companies already in the North to improve on a supply-chain manufacturing system for these SIP panel homes?
To be honest, I think it's too early to say. We've got to do our evaluation, monitor the SIP home, the solar panels, as well as, like I said, we have to do the research and continue to monitor and evaluate before we look at expanding the program, but we are anticipating that we are going to see some energy efficiencies, and hopefully we can move forward with this.
Most recently, as well the Member knows, we did sit down with the Deline Got'ine Government around other housing infrastructure needs, as well as promoting our housing programs and how we can work together. Right now, it's too early to say. We are going to continue to evaluate and research before we make those decisions. Right now, I am pretty sure that we are going to anticipate some savings and we will continue work with the communities and the local governments as well as keep the Member apprised of those evaluations.
Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that reply here. That leads to my other question that the Minister touched on here. I was going to encourage the Minister to give a strong consideration in viewing the end product that's already in Deline and witness the consumption and reductions through the receipts of the utility bills for those homes and schedule a manufacturing conference or meeting in Deline with some of the potential manufacturing in the North. Would the Minister commit to initiating that workshop, if you want to call it, in Deline between the Deline Got'ine Government, the public, and the manufacturing companies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As I mentioned, it is a little bit too early to say what we are going to do in terms of expansion of this program. We have to evaluate. We already had an initial discussion with the Deline Got'ine Government on a lot of our housing programs and how we can work together as well as work with the federal government.
We do want to support our communities, as well as the communities that have the highest utility costs, and address our cost of living. I am committed to continuing that work, but we are going to need to look at the evaluation and continue to monitor before we decide what our next steps are. As I mentioned, early onset, we are seeing some really good results. We will commit to working with the communities that we have installed these structural insulated panels, the ones that we installed in north Tulita, Fort Good Hope, Deline, and Colville Lake. We will continue to work with the Member moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe in consensus governments, and, after working in the system, I know that the grass is greener on this side of the fence. Of course, there is always room for improvement. In order for our system to function, strong leadership is required. Now is the time for that leadership. The Premier has quite broad powers, greater than most people realize, I believe, and with that comes a great responsibility. Every time I go into his office, I feel like Luca Brasi in the beginning of The Godfather, so I know. I'm sure he's firmly in control of his Cabinet.
I want to ask the Premier: this House has made clear that it will not tolerate an acceptance of the failure outlined in the Auditor General's report on Child and Family Services. What is the Premier going to do about this? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
